The U-2 crisis
The U-2 Crisis
- In this tense and fearful atmosphere, the Soviet Union raised new challenges to the West in Berlin
- In November 1958, Nikita Khrushchev renewed his predecessors’ demands that NATO powers abandon the city
- The United States and its allies refused
- Khrushchev suggested that he and Eisenhower discuss the issue personally
- The United States agreed
- Only days before Eisenhower was to leave for Moscow the Soviet Union announced that it had shot down an American U-2, a spy plane, over Russian territory
- By the spring of 1960, Khrushchev knew that no agreement was possible on the Berlin issue
- The events of 1960 provided a somber backdrop for the end of the Eisenhower administration
- He warned in his farewell address of 1961 of the “unwarranted
- influence” of a vast “military-industrial complex”
- His caution, in both domestic and international affairs, stood in marked contrast to the attitudes of his successors, who argued that the United States must act more boldly and aggressively on behalf of its goals at home and abroad